Dozens of people have been killed in clashes between Iraqi government troops and militants as well as car bombs in the northern city of Mosul in Nineveh Province.
The clashes broke out on Friday a day after a curfew was imposed on Mosul following a deadly fighting in the city of Samarra further to the south.
Security sources said the militants attacked Mosul from the northwest and the west, killing at least seven security forces.
In southern Mosul, at least eleven soldiers were killed after five bombers stormed an arms depot and some managed to detonate their vests before being shot.
Two car bomb attacks also claimed lives of six members of the Shabak minority in the village of Muwaffaqiyah near Mosul.
Mohammed Ibrahim, a member of the security and defense committee in the provincial council of Nineveh, said the security forces had killed 105 militants and destroyed 20 vehicles belonging to them.
The attacks were blamed on the militants of al-Qaeda breakaway group the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is also active in Syria.
“What the western areas of the city (Mosul) witnessed today is a scheme by ISIL to disperse the security effort and alleviate the pressure on the terrorists in Anbar Province,” Ibrahim said.
On Thursday, Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces backed by helicopters launched a massive operation and drove militants from the ISIL out of the city.
On June 4, over 30 people lost their lives in a spate of bombings and shootings across the country.
Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of violence unprecedented in recent years.
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